There's A New Online Gaming Store In Town

Billing itself as the home of open gaming, particularly D&D 5th Edition OGL products, a new online store has just opened up. It has been planned by a consortium of top OGL-supporting companies, including Kobold Press, Frog God Games, Troll Lord Games, Green Ronin, Rite Publishing, Super Genius Games, Expeditious Retreat Games, Hero Games, and more. Already it stocks 5E products from these companies, both in electronic and print form. The store is called Tabletop Library. They have announced themselves with a press release which you can see below.

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The new store's main competition is, of course, the monolithic OBS (DriveThruRPG, RPGNow, and now DMs Guild, etc.) and, to a lesser extent, Paizo.com, Warehouse 23 (over at Steve Jackson Games) and smaller outfits like d20pfsrd.com's web store. There have been other stores in the past - YourGamesNow closed a couple of years ago (a casino now appears to have the domain) and the EN World GameStore was bought by OBS about 10 years ago. It's a tough market. In terms of sales, I'd estimate that 95% of my own (EN Publishing's) direct PDF sales are at DTRPG, and about 5% at Paizo (not counting Patreon, Kickstarter, and so on, which are an entirely different story). I have tried products on YGN and d20pfsrd's store, but never sold a single item on either of them, which speaks to how tough a nut to crack that segment of the industry is.

The fees at the new store are pretty low. For PDFs, it only takes 25% of a seller's revenues, which is 5%-10% lower than the competition (and 25% lower than DMsG which takes 50%).

PRESS RELEASE

Kobold Press, Frog God Games, Troll Lord Games, Green Ronin, Rite Publishing, Super Genius Games, Expeditious Retreat Games, Hero Games, Rogue Comet, Metallic Dice Games, Pacesetter Games and Simulations, Eldritch Enterprises; Far Future Enterprises and TableTopLibrary.com

March 10, 2016

Kobold Press, Frog God Games, Troll Lord Games, Green Ronin, Hero Games, Rogue Comet; Pacesetter Games and Simulations, Eldritch Enterprises; Far Future Enterprises and TableTopLibrary.com are jointly announcing that, effective immediately, our companies will all be offering our Fifth Edition products through a new RPG download store called TableTopLibrary, as a one-stop shop for OGL Fifth Edition products. TableTopLibrary, website https://tabletoplibrary.com/ is a newly-formed online store for RPG books and pdfs designed to offer both electronic versions and hard copy versions of books produced by your favorite publishers. TabletopLibrary will also offer a full slate of products and resources for other role-playing games, including Pathfinder and OSR-games. All of us will continue our own websites and stores, but TableTopLibrary offers a place to draw all these products together in one place for convenience.

At this time, by coming together as a consortium, we can offer the high-quality products we pride ourselves on; provide a one-stop shopping spot with outstanding customer service; and allow a better experience for publishers, and more importantly, for customers . Centralized electronic book fulfillment, kickstarter fulfillment, and single-location warehousing will improve our delivery speed, accuracy, and customer service in the RPG download market.

Our reasons for setting up a consortium at this time include (1) each partner retains ownership and editorial control over the individual campaign worlds and other “intellectual property” that our fans have known and loved for years; (2) our desire to offer physically higher-quality printing, paper quality, and binding than print on demand outlets offer; and (3) the desire to continue drawing upon and increasing the vast resources of Open Game Content as opposed to other alternatives.

TableTopLibrary is committed to offering a deep and broad-based marketplace of Fifth Edition products, superior to any other online store, as well as many other game system products. We are joined in a partnership of many large publishers in this project, and expect many more to join us as time goes on. TableTopLibrary will be issuing its own press release soon, describing the advantages and the procedures involved in joining.

You can continue buying products directly from each of us, as always. But if you want to browse the whole library of Fifth Edition and other products produced under the Open Game License over the years, we’re letting you know that there’s a new online game store in town.

Check out TableTopLibrary at TableTopLibrary.com - The Leading Source for RPGs and watch us grow! We think you’ll be impressed.

 

[Morrus]

I am also not clear on the advantages to the consumer. The current positioning is aimed at sellers (we take a smaller cut!) and not buyers.

As a buyer, at the very least I expect to have a (filterable) library of my purchased products but there isn't one.

OBS has set the bar for a buyers expectations. To succeed this site will have to meet or better yet, exceed, what they have done.

To be fair, it took OBS 16 years to build up the features it currently has. Any new venture is going to be playing catch-up. I'm hopeful that lots of useful features will be coming along.

With luck, they'll also think of some kind of new unique feature. I can't think what that might be, though.

 

[Christopher Helton]

Could you publish something in DM Guild and this site (and others)?

The DM's Guild is an exclusive deal.

 

[Christopher Helton]

To be fair, it took OBS 16 years to build up the features it currently has. Any new venture is going to be playing catch-up. I'm hopeful that lots of useful features will be coming along.

With luck, they'll also think of some kind of new unique feature. I can't think what that might be, though.

I think that something that could be done, that doesn't require any special coding or features, would be to reach out to respected reviewers and/or tastemakers and build a "curation" feature with them.

 

[Stan Shinn]

Here's my $0.02 what makes TableTopLibrary.com different.

OBS/DriveThruRPG is a great aggregator for PDFs and POD products, but they don't offer non-POD options (for example, no box sets, no big posters, no old-school modules with detachable covers, etc.).

Amazon is a great aggregator for warehoused products, but they don't offer 'buy this book, get the PDF for free' type options.

TableTopLibrary fills a unique niche in that they can warehouse products like box sets, posters, dice, dice bags, etc., while also allowing digital tie-ins. For my part for example, I'll soon sell box sets where you buy such physical products and get the digital items included, something I can't do through either OBS/DriveThruRPG or Amazon.com.

The other thing that TableTopLibrary does is let you do a traditional print run (using a local printer or whatever) and use TableTopLibrary for warehousing and distribution. So if you want something that OBS POD can't do (for example, a 60 page saddle-stitched booklet, or 5.5x8.5" booklets) you now have options for different product formats, with the option for higher quality printing than you often get with traditional POD.

 

[Dire Bare]

And that's all I really want to say on "the Incident".

Thanks! Sounds like OBS handled the situation well, if not perfectly. Reminds me of the impact and effect on WotC when the "Book of Erotic Fantasy" was released.

I'm all for new digital RPG stores entering the field and giving OBS some much needed competition, and I might be willing to become a customer, but I won't have a problem continuing my patronage of OBS. And (without knowing more details, if it matters), I would find a publisher pulling product from OBS over the "incident" to be an overreaction, one that wouldn't rate favorably in my continued patronage of that publisher.

And now I don't have to google "Gbheanzrag bs Encvfgf" (heh) while at work!

 

[Stan Shinn]

As to inventory and not having a lot of hard copies yet, they just opened today and many (all?) of the vendors have not had time to ship them physical products and get them up for sale. In a month or two they should have plenty of physical merchandise for sale.

In a sense, TableTopLibrary is more like Amazon than OBS given their focus on distributing traditional print run products vs. POD.

 

[Dire Bare]

Here's my $0.02 what makes TableTopLibrary.com different.

Thanks Stan! Nice to hear from a publisher involved with the new site!

Looking forward to Dungeonesqe Red Box! The Indiegogo campaign closes super soon, right?

Mmmmm, boxed sets + digital files! Tasty!

 

[froggie]

We are set up and running, but bear with us for a few weeks while we load more product, work out all the kinks and add new features. Its a process, and your feedback is both welcomed and encouraged. We want to make the shopping experience and the selling experience as easy and fun as possible. Expect lots of updates as we add new material and features.

Competition is good. This has nothing to do with any controversy, we just felt it was time to have alternatives to the big dog. Steve is my friend (anyone remember Swords and Sorcery Studios?), and he has literally built an empire on online sales. We plan to do things a little differently.

First, by charging less, we hope it will motivate publishers to produce more. We will have sales and promos of course as well for customers.

We also have the infrastructure (me basically) to fulfill dead tree books--something others don't have. FGG has warehouse space and packing crews to make this happen. We plan to add POD later on, but as most of you know, POD does not really work for some of us (our books are huge and have to be stitch bound hardcovers so they don't fall apart).

Dead tree books will be added for many companies in the days and weeks to come.

You really gotta check out those dice

Bill Webb

 

[Zardnaar]

I could be interested with buy physical product get PDF for free. I buy real stuff from Amazon on occasion and get it shipped to New Zealand (recently 6th printing of C&C PHB and Adventurer Conquer King) as we do not really have print on demand here for a decent price.

I think I would be after dead tree copies of the Quests of Doom adventures especially new ones in the future. I am guessing you can't match Amazons prices but free PDFs could swing that assuming postage is similar or if you are selling stuff Amazon doesn't.

 

[Mythmere1]

So, as one of the owners, here's my two cents on the questions people have asked:
Points of Competition with OBS:
On day one, as Morrus points out, we're competing on technology with a company that has had years to build a fantastic customer-service and sales-maximization site. It is totally fair to say that our customer experience, on day one, is not going to match up with OBS. We will be competing based on publishers, content, and the fact that our physical product "inventory" is a different model entirely than the POD service that OBS has set up.

From the customer standpoint, those who are looking for the OGL publishers, particularly for 5th edition D&D, will find those products on Tabletop Library a bit more easily than at OBS. There will still be a lot of product overlap, but OBS has every incentive to focus on the DM Guild, and our group is heavily focused on the OGL side of 5e publishing. It won't really be a matter of two "camps," just a matter of each site having more weight behind a different 5e license. Also, as a less-major factor, there will be some dice and other fun accessories listed on the same site, which is nice.

For publishers, for non-5e products, the main benefits are simply the slightly-higher payout and the ability to use traditional print runs which go to a warehouse, instead of being limited to POD. Like Stan said, we're a bit more like Amazon in that way. Many of the publishers use higher-quality binding than POD, or like to use particular sorts of paper, or various other details that are standardized for POD but customized at print shops. POD simply offers fewer options than working directly with a printer rep for the publishers who go into detail at that depth. Plus margins can be higher on a traditional print run, if you don't mind paying money up front.

For 5e products, the "competition" with the DM Guild has more aspects to it. I prefer not to go into those, because if I go on at any length it will sound like I'm criticizing DM Guild, when I really think it's a great thing for certain kinds of publishing and certain publishers. The thing is, that for other kinds of publishers and publishing, the DM Guild is really not a workable license. That's all I want to say, because I'm a big fan of DM Guild in many, many respects. I just think that over time, OGL publishing is going to be the preferred method for 5e publishers, and as those resources build, TableTop Library will have a somewhat larger share.

There are already several 5e products on TableTop Library that aren't for sale anywhere else, and more that are only sold at TTL+publisher's site. There's a unique body of 5e products there -- it's small but growing fast. We had 5 publishers sign up within 1 hour of the initial press releases from Kobold and Frog God.